Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Chapter 47: 47. Even If We Don’t Say A Thing About Last Night... We Have Our Own Marks.

"Regardless," Catherine said, her voice regaining a brittle, razor-sharp formality.

She sat upright, pulling her shoulders back with the practiced grace of a woman who had spent a lifetime mastering the art of the poised facade. It was the posture of someone desperately trying to reconstruct a shattered vase, one piece of dignity at a time.

"I need you to promise me something. Something absolute and something... binding."

She fixed him with a gaze that was both commanding and deeply, painfully vulnerable. "Nobody at the academy can know."

"Not a single soul... Not a whisper in the corridors, and not a hint in the faculty lounge."

William leaned back, watching her. He could see the slight tremor in her hands, the way her eyes flickered with the frantic energy of a cornered animal.

"The Vice Headmaster getting drunk with a new instructor and losing an entire night’s memory would be, at the very least, a deeply embarrassing lapse in judgment," she continued, her words coming faster now, a frantic staccato of damage control. "And at worst? It would be a scandal indeed."

"A genuine, career-ending, reputation-shredding scandal that could undermine everything we have worked for."

"Both of us, William. Our positions, our authority... everything."

"I wasn’t planning on making a grand announcement, Catherine," William said, his voice a low, grounding rumble.

’Gods, she’s still vibrating with it,’ he thought, a sudden, intrusive memory of her arched back and the way her breath had hitched in his ear making his pulse spike. ’ She’s trying to fight the memory like it’s a monster, but you can’t kill something that’s already part of you.’

"I mean it!" she snapped, her composure fraying at the edges. "This academy runs on the currency of reputation and appearances as much as actual magical competence."

"If word got out that the vice headmaster, a woman of standing, had simply... lost herself to..."

"Catherine," William interrupted, a small, knowing tilt to his head.

He felt a sudden, wicked impulse to test just how much of that dignity was left. "It might already be a little late for damage control."

Catherine blinked, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "What do you mean? We were careful!"

"We stayed in the private quarters."

"Yeah, I know, but..."

Without a word, William reached across the table. His large, calloused fingers moved to the collar of his tunic, gently angling the fabric aside.

There, stark against the tan skin of his neck, was a faint, unmistakable, and decidedly accidental mark: a bruise the exact shape of a desperate grip, a souvenir from being pressed too hard against the rough corner of a couch cushion during a night of restless, heated sleep.

He didn’t say a word. He simply nodded meaningfully toward the small, polished silver mirror hanging near the kitchen doorway.

The silence that followed was deafening. Catherine’s expression remained frozen in confusion for exactly three seconds, the time it took for her eyes to travel to the mirror, catch her own reflection, and realize the truth.

The sound she made was a strangled, high-pitched collision of a shriek and a sob. It was the sound of a woman realizing she had been defeated by a pillow.

"Oh no," she gasped, her hands flying to her collarbone, her eyes widening in pure, unadulterated horror. "Oh no, no, no... it’s there."

"It’s right there! It looks exactly like... like a mark!"

"Someone is going to see this and they’re going to assume we—they’re going to think we—"

"To be fair," William said, his voice entirely too calm, a dark glint of amusement dancing in his eyes as he watched her unravel. "It does look exactly like that..."

"It’s quite prominent, actually."

"This is not the time for your ’fairness,’ William!" she hissed, her face flushing a deep, mortified crimson. "This is a catastrophe! A tactical disaster!"

"I’m being extremely helpful," he countered, leaning forward, enjoying the way her panic made her eyes spark. "I’m providing essential context for the inevitable interrogation."

Catherine groaned, a low, guttural sound of despair, and buried her face in both hands. Her fingers dug into her hair, her entire body trembling with the sheer, desperate will to simply cease existing, to melt into the floorboards and vanish.

"You need to promise me," she muffled into her palms, her voice thick with a mix of embarrassment and lingering, heavy heat. "Promise me you won’t tell a single soul!"

"Not Olivia, not the senior mages, and not the lowest-ranked student in the academy!"

"Absolutely nobody can know that the Vice Headmaster--"

"I promise," William said, his voice softening, though the smirk remained etched on his lips.

He meant it, truly. He would guard her secret like a dragon guards its hoard.

"For what it’s worth, though..." He paused, his gaze turning heavy and intensely sincere. "If anyone does ask... if they look at you and see the truth... I’m perfectly willing to tell them the whole damn thing."

"And that I’m more than happy to take full responsibility for whatever they think happened."

Catherine went very still, lowering her hands slowly to stare at him. "What does that mean...?"

William shrugged, leaning back in his chair with the easy, deliberate charm of a man who knew exactly what effect his words were about to have. "It means if this somehow becomes a problem for your reputation, I’m not going to let you carry that weight alone."

"Whatever people assume, whatever gets said, I’ll stand next to you and own my part in it."

"That’s just how I work."

Whatever Catherine had been about to say died somewhere in her throat. Her cheeks, already flushed from embarrassment, deepened into something considerably warmer, and for several long seconds she simply stared at him, lips parted slightly, apparently having forgotten entirely what she’d meant to argue about.

"That’s..." she started, then stopped, cleared her throat, and tried again in a voice noticeably softer than her usual crisp administrative tone. "That’s very generous of you."

"I try," William said, and went back to his eggs like he hadn’t just watched an incredibly composed woman nearly short circuit across her own breakfast table.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a familiar chime sounded, quiet and almost polite this time.

[Affection Progress: Catherine Blackwood--Ten percent.]

’Oh... here we go... the new evolved system is finally working.’

William allowed himself the smallest, most private smile.

...

They ended up in the small yard behind Catherine’s house sometime after breakfast, both of them apparently in unspoken agreement that physical activity would do more to settle the lingering awkwardness between them than any further conversation could manage.

Catherine retrieved a pair of wooden practice swords from a shed near the back fence, tossing one to William with considerably more composure than she’d managed at any point that morning.

"Better than sitting around discussing what did or didn’t happen last night," she said, falling into a familiar guard stance.

"Agreed completely," William said, testing the weight of the wooden blade in his hand before mirroring her stance.

They moved through a few basic exchanges first, nothing serious, simply working through the motions of a light warm-up while the morning sun climbed higher over the yard’s low stone wall.

Catherine’s movements were noticeably looser than they’d been during her very first training session, muscle memory settling back into place with each passing exchange, though William noted, with the ever-present analytical part of his mind that never fully switched off, that something in her form still carried a subtle, persistent tension.

"You’re doing better," William said, deflecting a moderate strike and stepping back to reset their spacing. "Genuinely."

"The stiffness from your first session is mostly gone."

"Mostly," Catherine agreed, wiping a bit of sweat from her forehead with the back of her free hand. "I suppose facing down an actual conspiracy and nearly dying to a summoned monster provides excellent motivation to remember old training."

William let that hang for a moment, turning it over with the deliberate patience of someone choosing exactly the right angle to approach a subject that mattered.

"Speaking of the monster," he said eventually, keeping his tone light, almost casual, "you looked genuinely terrified when it showed up."

"More than I expected, honestly, given how well you handled the ambush drills yesterday evening."

Catherine’s rhythm faltered slightly, her next strike landing a half second later than it should have, a small hesitation that William’s trained eye caught immediately even though he suspected most people would have missed it entirely.

"It was a tier five creature," she said, her voice carefully even. "Anyone would be afraid of that."

"Sure," William said, deflecting her next strike and stepping into the following exchange without breaking his own rhythm. "But you weren’t just afraid of the monster."

"It seems to me that you were specifically afraid when it appeared I was about to fight the monster alone."

Catherine didn’t answer immediately. Their swords met again, wood cracking against wood in a rhythm that had grown steadily slower over the last several exchanges, both of them circling now more than actively striking.

"William," she said finally, her voice quieter than before, "can we talk about something else...?"

’Huh? Did I say something wrong...?’

William studied her for a moment, close enough now in their circling to see the fine tremor that had crept into her sword hand, subtle but unmistakable, the kind of shake that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with something older, something William recognized instantly from decades spent reading exactly this kind of tell in soldiers who carried scars nobody could see.

He lowered his wooden blade slightly, not fully disengaging but softening his stance enough to signal that the exercise had shifted into something else entirely.

"Catherine," he said gently, nodding toward her hand. "Your hand is shaking."

Catherine looked down at her own fingers wrapped around the practice sword’s grip, and whatever composure she’d been holding onto throughout the entire morning finally, visibly, began to crack.